The Space Between
by 1Styx and Stones1
Summary: Or, Wally and Artemis, filling in the gaps. Because a lot can happen in five years.


**Hey, look! I finally wrote another Young Justice story! I mean, at first I was all like 'dude what the heck is up with this where are my bbs why did they have to go and screw over this perfectly amazing things.' But then Artemis and Wally reappeared. In an apartment together. *blissful smile* And Friday's episode totally got me inspired, what with all the FREAKING AMAZINGNESS and was I the only one seeing all that unrequited Traught goin' on? Yes? *sigh* Yeah, I figured. **

**Anyway, I want opinions on both this and season two. And be warned - this thang's rather long, since it DOES cover five years. Also some of the back stories are no doubt wrong. But shoosh. This is what we're pretending happened, m'kay?  
**

**Disclaimer: I'm starting a letter-writing campaign, but... thus far no luck. **

* * *

So they fight a lot.

Like, they're making out on the couch (which would be very romantic if Dick would just stop with the immature gagging noises already, thank you very much) and then Wally starts getting side-tracked by the football game on television.

And then Artemis bites him really hard on the lip in a way that is "_Ow_! Totally not sexy, babe!"

She snaps at him and he snaps back and suddenly they are bickering. And then they untangle themselves and sit on opposites sides of the couch in sulky silence until the next commercial break comes and Wally gets bored.

And then they make out again.

Dick gags until his throat actually starts to hurt, so eventually he gives up with that and starts up a running commentary, in a posh British accent, on Wally's tongue technique instead.

M'gann giggles and Kaldur rolls his eyes fondly and Zatanna plays along, adopting her own British accent so as to compare Dick's kissing techniques with Wally's.

The night draws to a close when Dick gets a bit too daring, high off the way Zatanna's smiling at him, and asks Conner to break down his own technique, possibly with a demonstration.

Conner glowers, breaks out some impressive vocab, calling Dick a "voyeur" and proving that he _has_ been taking vocabulary lessons from Kaldur, and then he literally growls when Wally surfaces long enough to say as much.

Everybody scatters.

* * *

Wally says they're like a sitcom.

He is, of course, the dashing male lead. (Insert Artemis' snort of skepticism here, because you don't just _turn off_ all that snark simply because your prime target is now your boyfriend.)

Artemis is, just as obviously, the sharp-tongued female heroine who is undeserving of her male counterpart, even if she is pretty awesome.

M'gann and Conner are the perfect, albeit boring, couple who does clichéd, couple-y things like bake cookies and feed squirrels on park benches and occasionally kiss primly, chastely, on the lips.

Robin and Zatanna are the obnoxious trolls who live under bridges and know everything about everyone. No one is ever quite sure whether or not they are dating. No one can summon the courage to ask.

Kaldur's the seventeen-year-old grandfather with a classy vocabulary and gills.

And Raquel's pretty much just the clichéd black person of the team. They keep her around to ensure their team remains culturally diverse, thus politically correct, and because it's admittedly hilarious when she says, "Oh HELLZ no!"

And, like, it's pretty awesome.

They would totally be in a reality show (a better, weirder version of _Jersey Shore_) if they weren't too busy saving the world.

* * *

So, yeah, it's pretty awesome, when they're fighting or laughing or kissing or waging wars over the last Oreo (don't ask), but sometimes Wally gets to thinking.

Which isn't so awesome.

They face crazy bad guys with crazy costumes and crazy weapons every day, but it's the future that's totally freaking Wally out these days.

He sees what adulthood is doing to Red Arrow.

The scruffy beard thing is not even the worst of it.

* * *

They throw Wally a party at the cave for his seventeenth birthday and mostly it's really fun.

This time around it doesn't even bother him when Megan kisses Conner and smears icing on his nose, because Artemis has her long, callused fingers knotted with his and because she's wearing this amazing shirt that fits her just perfectly.

Roy shows up really late and Wally's pretty sure he's smashed. His eyes are rimmed redder than his hair and his coveted biceps seem shrunken under pallid skin.

He laughs with a sort of grim, humorless irony and tells Wally to enjoy himself.

The "_it all goes downhill from here_" is implied.

* * *

"Come on."

Wally squints sleepily at the silhouette leaning against the doorframe of his bedroom at the cave, where he has opted to spend his birthday night.

"Hi. You seem to have broken into my home. Should I be alarmed or-"

"Nah, I'm just here to murder you in your sleep."

"Well, I'm not exactly _asleep_ anymore," he points out grumpily.

Artemis fakes a sigh. "Damn it. I guess I'll just have to kidnap you instead. Now get up and please tell me you are not wearing Kid Flash pajama pants."

He grins. "Kid Flash _boxers_, baby. All the way."

She groans and waits as he pulls on sweatpants, then grabs him by the hand and leads him down the hall and out into the cold air.

In the moonlight, with snow dusting her hair like a hazy gold coronet, she's the most beautiful thing he's even seen.

The angel grins devilishly and hoists herself onto his back, digging into his gut with her boot and pressing her chin into his shoulder where it fits so uncannily well. "Giddy up."

"I could say something really suggestive right no- _oof_!"

"Or you could just run us somewhere warm before I have to kick you again," suggests Artemis. Her throat vibrates against the back of his neck with every word she speaks.

If he didn't love her so much he totally would have dumped her into a snow bank.

* * *

He runs them to some random beach on the west coast where it's warm enough to walk bare foot through the wet sand by the shore line.

Across the smooth, wet sand they make footprints and write their names in big, looping letters surrounded by curvy hearts. They laugh when the water washes it all away, because now they get to do it all over again.

They splash until they're beyond wet and their skin is scaly with goose bumps, and then they lay in the warm, gray sand of the dunes and Wally makes a crazy effort to just _stay still_ and not let the lightning impulses override his mind.

His fingers are twitching like crazy and he's set his muscles so tight that they hurt. He needs to move; his mind is racing and all the energy's building up like a tidal wave inside him and-

Artemis abruptly yanks him to his feet, vaulting onto his back in a fluid motion and knotting her fingers in his hair. "_Go_," she says.

And they're alone on an empty, secluded beach at three in the morning, so he does.

He runs until the air is thick with the dusty sand he's kicking up, until he's more blur than boy. Artemis is wrapped around him, with her hands spread in the air like she's flying, her ponytail trailing behind her like a flag of sunlight as she whoops, long and high.

The sound echoes around the vortex of his sheer speed and they're _flying_.

No one else ever really understands the feeling, the adrenaline and the freedom, like they're going on forever.

Wally thinks it's sort of like love - you have no idea what it feels like until you're feeling it - only, like, crazier.

* * *

Next week they try to go back, only they get lost and end up in a McDonald's in Oregon instead.

They never find their way back to that beach again. And maybe it's better that way.

* * *

"I feel like you two have a very abusive relationship," says M'gann abruptly, putting down her knitting (yeah, she's regressing even further into sweet, sugary dweeb-dom) and eyeing the tangle of red and gold concernedly.

Artemis' face is flushed pink as she pulls back, her arms wrapped around Wally's neck, long enough to say frankly, albeit breathlessly, "I beg to differ."

And then Wally's captured her attention (and lips) once more. M'gann averts her eyes, shaking her head slightly. "It's like you sort of hate each other? Only you like to kiss and you'd each freak out if the other died."

She gets no response as the couple slides further and further down the couch, from a vertical to a horizontal position.

Eventually she leaves.

Humans are so confusing sometimes.

* * *

He starts doing research on sidekicks who grew up to be superheroes, because everyone else in his grade is visiting colleges and taking SAT prep courses and, yeah, he's either saving the world or making out with his girlfriend.

He has to make investments for his future (other than, like, ensuring that it isn't blown up by some megalomaniac on an every day basis), according to his mom.

So he starts researching superheroes.

And behind the red capes and iconic faces is a scary world.

Like, the Justice League is a pretty new concept, but there've been superheroes for just about forever.

It's just that not all their stories are fit for the comic books.

Roy's not the only one who has gotten lost along the way.

And as Wally sits in the League library, flipping through page after page of newspaper archives about fallen heroes, dead or corrupted or mangled or bitter, he starts to feel fear.

He starts to wonder about how nonchalant Robin is about decking a guy, about how the concept of privacy is fast becoming extinct for M'gann, about the way Zatanna's eyes glint darkly vindictive as she snaps out her spells.

The word, he believes, is _'jaded_.'

It's not something he wants.

* * *

Like, he never really got over the whole Artemis-dying-but-not-really thing, because even if the scenario was false, the blackened cavity of pain&loss&emptiness was not.

His breath still catches at his windpipe with jagged, broken fingernails every time a bullet streaks by her thick, sunny ponytail.

Yeah, that's fear.

And maybe superheroes aren't supposed to feel fear or whatever, but Wally totally does.

He can't do that thing, that thing that Batman does, with the flat voice and the steady eyes and the firm jaw that doesn't ever question sending kids into a warzone.

It used to be this rush - like a video game, only better - to be near death and experience the sharp adrenaline of fear. Colors and sounds and good&bad, and that was it, and at the end of the day he went home and he went to sleep in his room with his Kid Flash pajamas (because, _hello_, irony).

But it stops.

* * *

"What would happen-" says Artemis. She doesn't finish her sentence, but her fingers trail feather-light along his ribcage, so gentle that the freshly-closed bullet wound in his chest doesn't even really hurt, and he knows what she means.

They're laying in the dunes of the beach by the cave in their civvies. She's got a bruised face and a split lip that blossoms like a swollen red rose. He's got more bandages than a mummy holding his midriff together and her hand in his, holding the rest of him together.

"I don't know."

"I don't know if I could handle . . . _that_."

"I already tried to, remember? And everything ended up exploding-"

"Dad always said not to get attached, just in case-"

Wally takes a breath and watches as a gull arches, dusky and free, across the evening sky. "Have you ever thought about college?"

* * *

More people join the team.

Zatanna and this girl named Barbara have a total stare-down as Dick introduces them.

It's pretty intense, man.

And then suddenly they're _bestfriendsforever_, except each is watching the other with squinty eyes and they're both watching The Boy Wonder.

Wally starts taking bets on who'll deck the other first.

* * *

Graduation's fast approaching.

Uncle Barry starts randomly texting him with obnoxious suggestions for his Leaguer name. Speedy Gonzalez (_if only you were Mexican..._ ), Sweet Feet, and Jolt (_think of all the energy drink endorsements!_) are among his least perverted.

No one mentions the name Speedy.

No one's seen Roy in a good six months.

* * *

They have this mock-prom thing at the cave a week before the real deal, which is basically an excuse for the girls to dress up and for Robin to spike the punch.

Artemis wears blue. It totally clashes with the tiger lily corsage he buys her, but it's in this weirdly synonymous way that reminds him of _them_.

They are escorted from the premises at least a dozen times for practicing PDA by a disgusted Captain Marvel, who is truly fearful of 'cooties.'

Zatanna and Babs both dance with Dick, that pimp. M'gann and Conner dance, too, but Conner keeps hissing things out of the corner of his. mouths, like maybe there's trouble in their perfect little paradise.

Kaldur dances with a pretty girl named Tula, the newest member of their team. Nobody is ever quite sure how to classify her - girlfriend, friend - but everyone agrees that they cut a dashing, exotic pair.

It's totally beautiful, even though Babs and Zatanna are totally staring each other down and Conner and M'gann disappear halfway through a slow dance as their heated whispers escalate.

Mostly it's just awesome because Artemis looks freaking gorgeous.

* * *

Two days later everything falls apart.

M'gann and Conner aren't speaking. There's this new guy, L'gonn , on the team (who totally reminds Wally of one of Davy Jones' sailors in _The Pirates of the Caribbean_ with his fish-face) who's hitting on the newly single Martian. M'gann's ginger hair has been shorn in favor of a choppy pixy cut.

Zatanna's gushing excitedly about her offer to join the Justice League next year.

Everyone's a little off their game.

And then, out of nowhere, Tula's dead. Kaldur's eyes are bruised and angry. M'gann's crying into Fish-Face's shoulders.

Everyone else just stands there because no one else knows _what _to do.

* * *

Wally goes home and opens the letter from that college out in California, the one he didn't even apply to, the one that specializes in molecular science.

He writes out his acceptance letter with a black pen and an oddly empty mind.

He slides it into the mailbox and doesn't allow himself to feel guilt.

He tells Artemis that maybe it's time for a break.

* * *

Her eyes are the worst thing of all.

Uncle Barry's face is bad, when Wally tells him firmly that he doesn't want _all this_.

Dick's disgust is worse, when he tells Wally that this is what this life is about, loss and sacrifice for the greater good, and Wally walks away.

Dick (oh, excuse me, he's _nightshade_ now, and he's probably going to be a League member within the week, with cold eyes and a hard jaw) has been drinking Batman's Kool-Aid. And that hurts.

But Artemis' eyes win out.

Because she _knows_.

She sees that he's scared and disgusted and angry and _lost_. And she pities him.

He starts to remember what it was like to hate the sinewy girl with the ponytail and the attitude and the sea-gray eyes that haunt him.

* * *

Kaldur disappears like his best friend before him.

They have a funeral for Tula in a little white-stoned chapel by the sea, where you can hear the rush of the ocean and the throaty cry of the gulls. Wally sits still for as long as he can, his fingers twitching with all the built-up energy that needs to be released, before it gets to be too much to bear.

Tula's body is delivered to a sad-eyed Aquaman in a coffin made of driftwood. Wally watches as the bobbing heads of the Atlanteans sink beneath the water, and then he runs before he can think about it for a second more.

He runs until he can't hear the mournful toll of the church bells anymore, even though he can still feel Artemis' deep gray eyes searing the back of his neck like a sunburn.

* * *

On his last night in the cave, while they're all sitting there in their black uniforms and pretending there's not two absent shadows on the wall, he sneaks away.

He eyes the countless souvenirs, from the good missions and the bad missions and the missions where they all just sat there and played Go Fish and nothing ended up happening, that populate the sleek shelves.

He would smile, except someone's added a new souvenir to the collection - a round, white stone, smoothed to a silky perfection by the rough tide, propped up against a picture of the original team.

So instead he just sighs and pulls off his goggles, scrubbing roughly at his eyes with the back of his hand and resisting the urge to run (_he doesn't do that, remember? not anymore_).

He puts the goggles down next to the sleek-shafted arrow that saved his life forever ago.

"Souvenir," he says, just to himself as he backs away, and then he leaves.

* * *

He moves out to an apartment near the school the old-fashioned way, with a moving truck. He drives all the way there.

When he gets there Artemis is sitting on his kitchen counter in one of his jerseys, with her hair down and falling in her gray eyes.

"Um," he says intelligently.

She vaults down and socks him so hard in the stomach that he literally doubles over in pain.

"You will be paying my rent until I see fit," she informs him. "And then we'll talk about a fifty-fifty deal."

He kisses her, hard.

She kisses back and he stops being so afraid.

"Do you want us to assemble the bed?" inquires one of the upperclassmen, whom Wally has recruited to help carry up his furniture, sarcastically.

Artemis throws a pillow at him. She does not miss.

* * *

First they get fish, lovingly named Fido, Carroll, Jehoshaphat, and L'gonn.

The fish die within two days of their purchase.

This is very much a disappointment to Wally, though Artemis seems to find it amusing, judging from the way she smirks as she flushes poor L'gonn down the toilet.

His girlfriend is an evil woman.

* * *

Next they get a dog.

A big one, that won't fit down the toilet.

Sometimes he drinks the toilet water, but . . . Well, Wally can always blame the dog if Artemis starts yelling about leaving the toilet seat up, right? Total silver lining right there.

* * *

Sometimes when he watches the news, his conscience twinges.

'Cause, like, he's in this awesome apartment with his gorgeous girlfriend and meanwhile there're people who are alone and hurt and helpless.

He wonders about Roy sometimes.

He wonders about what he might have become.

But he doesn't really have time for that, 'cause he's got a huge paper due tomorrow that's supposed to be about, like, the ripple effect and how your decisions affect everyone, not just you.

And, seriously, what the heck is that anyway?

* * *

They find the beach again on a Tuesday.

It's pouring rain and Artemis is in sweatpants and Wally's got this stupid _One Direction_ song stuck in his head.

But they stand at the shoreline, with their hands linked and their sweatpants rolled up around their ankles and the rain pouring down, making Artemis' hair frizz.

Artemis whoops at the top of her lungs, long and loud and exhilarated, and they stand in the rain and watch the seagulls fly away.

* * *

**Yeah, I don't know. **

**Like, personally, I kinda like it. But I'm rah-ther a novice to this whole fandom, so y'all should probably comment and inform me whether or not I did alright, just to be safe. Hint and stuff.  
**

**Also, I want to know whether or not you like what they're doing this season. I need to know I'm not the only one all conflicted-like!  
**

**In short, review please! Tell me whether I should keep writing YJ!  
**

**Thanks for reading!  
**


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